Comments (0)A Blessing’s Power
Parshat Toldot
November 20, 2009Rabbi Geoffrey Basik
Special to the Jewish Times
We read this parashah with great familiarity. This is the week for Jacob and Esau: the older one supplanted, the younger one being the bearer of the covenantal future. Rebecca schemes to have Isaac unwittingly confer his final, “innermost” blessing on Jacob.
Even some of the questions that arise are by now familiar. What do we think of Jacob’s deceit? What significance do we glean from the actual content of the blessing (grain and wine, staple and luxury)? Do we relate to sibling rivalry or parental favoritism? And what is the power of the blessing (for they were not predictive)?
With each reading we hope to find (and generally succeed) something new, something to linger on and think about and learn from, where previously we glided right past it.
Esau “cried out a big and bitter cry.” In the Hebrew, it’s the same word as in “Your brother’s bloods cry out to me from the ground,” from the Cain and Abel story. Esau says, not once but twice, “Bless me too, father!” And he asks, “Have you but one blessing, father?” I am moved by the pathos in these few verses. “Bless me too!” is full of emotional pain and suffering. Don’t we all want blessings?
We know that Esau is vilified in Torah, Prophets and Talmud. He is identified as the father of the people of Edom and the Amalekites, bitter enemies of the Israelites. When the Jewish people were persecuted by the Romans, the rabbis often referred to Rome as “Edom” or “Esau.” We are quite accustomed to the Esau-Edom-Amalek-Haman-Rome-Hitler “axis.”
Do we tend to simply read on? Do we satisfy ourselves with the one-dimensional and unfavorable characterization of Esau as an unrefined hairy man of the outdoors so we needn’t hear his cry?
In Deuteronomy (23:8), Torah teaches that we are, in fact, to strive to be more expansive with our compassion. “You shall not abhor an Edomite, for he is your kinsman. You shall not abhor an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in his land.” (Ishmael, too, born of Hagar the Egyptian, is our kinsman.)
God heard the cry of Abel’s blood, and the cries of Hagar and Ishmael, and we should hear the cry of Esau. We are enjoined to awaken, become aware, sensitize ourselves and open our hearts to the needs and cries of others, and thereby extend holiness in this world. If God is compassionate, we are to be compassionate.
Jacob and Esau are painted in our tradition in such a way as to represent different paradigmatic (archetypal) parts of our selves — hunter and herder, outdoors and in the camp, wild and mild, rough and gentle, unrefined and learned, fearless and fearful… It seems to me that real blessing comes in our lives only when we are integrated, when we embrace the whole of our selves, in all our parts. We are not meant to despise and demonize parts of our selves or others.
The Torah gives us a great hint of this insight. (“Insight,” even though Isaac cannot see, for his eyes had dimmed in his old age.) Before offering the blessing, Isaac wants to know which son is there. But there is confusion: “the voice is the voice of Jacob, yet the hands are the hands of Esau.” Isaac then gives up the identification project. He doesn’t know! The text says Isaac simply refers to him as “my son.” The being in front of him is a combination of both sons, and to this one he gives his blessing.
May we all be blessed.